I Hope We Can Eat This!!

While we were at the Baby Home earlier that day, our adoption coordinator asked “D” several questions about things that he liked, and she interpreted for us. He told her all about the foods he did and did not like. One of the things he mentioned he disliked was fish (reeba). Nyet reeba!! So as we are looking through the menu at the pictures, “D” sees something that looks like a chicken breast, but it is fish. He points to that and nods his head telling me that is what he would like. I tell him “Etta reeba”(this is fish). He gets an awful look on his face and shakes his head no and says “Nyet”. I am trying to ask him if he likes chicken (I just heard earlier that morning that he did like it. I look up the word for “chicken” in my handy-dandy Russian dictionary with transliterated words……HOLY CANNOLI!! Can any body say “chicken” in Russian?? It has about eleventy-seven letters in it….and I am having a hard time pronouncing it! I mean, I know a lot of long hard words like: pheochromocytoma and vanillylmandelic acid (reminds me of Millie Vanilly- for those of you that remember THAT fiasco) and thiazolidinediones……but I could NOT say “chicken”!! So…. here I am, at the table in the Chinatown restaurant, trying to communicate this to him. I get this idea (some of you remember we brought puppets with us to play with the children) and I pretend I have a puppet on my hand, and I am moving my hand up and down, and saying “BOK !! BOK!!” Now I am using both hands ….and clucking. I guess I am causing quite a stir in the restaurant with my chicken sounds, but he finally gets it and agrees to eating chicken!! I am so glad they did not serve “elephant” because THAT impression is really loud!! HA! The waitress comes and somehow I get the idea across that we would like a dish for the three of us consisting of noodles, chicken, and vegetables. When she hears “vegetable” she says “Oh, dah! Salat?” (Salad). I said nyet, and tried to explain about stir fry vegetables in with the chicken. After some time, she finally nodded her head and left. I looked over at Wayne and told him that we had better brace ourselves, because I am sure she is coming back with “fried eye balls” or something like that!! Alas! The food arrives, and it is really pretty good, to our surprise!! We got something like sweet and sour fried chicken in noodles and vegetables. You should have seen the look on “D”’s face when he looked at the food when it was served. I put some on his plate, he poked it with his fork, wrinkled his nose at it, tried to smell it, took a bite, shrugged his shoulders, and then wolfed it down!! HA!! After we are arrived back at the hotel later that afternoon, he was asked what he had for lunch. He told them he liked what he had very much, but he had no idea what it was!! Our lunchtime with “D” was very pleasant. He was curious about everything. He wanted to try all of the sauces on his food, which I let him, all except the HOT sauce. I did not know how to say “bolshoi spicy”, so I just said “Nyet” with no explanation and he was fine with it. He said his first word in English, too. I held up a fork and said “Vilka”. He looked and me and replied “Dah, Vilka”. Then I said “Fork”. He replied “ffffffffffffffffffffffffork.” “Mal ah dyets” we replied ( what a good boy/child)!! He smiled and seemed pleased with himself. We enjoyed our lunch, and when we were finished, the waitress took away our plates. Then “D” proceeded to start organizing the table, replacing the sauces, salt, pepper, sugar, etc. He then looked over at the waitressing station and saw all the little bamboo placemats all rolled up and stacked. He reached over and took all of the bamboo placemats on our table, and rolled them up exactly as he saw them, and then walked them over and placed them in the stack with the others!! I am thinking….. “Hey, they might want to wipe those down first”, but, I didn’t know how to say it…so we just let him carry on!! He is a very thoughtful boy. It is time to pay and I ask the waitress “Skolka yow dahs-NAH?’ (how much do I owe ?). She brings us the bill, we pay, get our coats and start the journey back to the hotel. When we arrived at the hotel, we played together for about 30 minutes before it was time to leave. We got out the playdough with a shape press, and he had a blast making different shapes and squeezing the playdough. I don’t think he had played with something like that before now. We played cars and colored, and built another lego (well, we tried to, but Papa needs a little more practice). It was almost time to go, and his caregiver would be arriving soon, and they would be traveling back to the boarding school in the Yagodninsky Village in the interior of Siberia. We will soon be saying “Good-bye”.